Friday, December 14, 2012

Boosters Part 2: The Secrets of the Drug Cartels

Last
week we talked about what Boosters were and how to use them. This week we
report on the processes used to make them.

Overview

The
basic process can be described as thus: you harvest special gas clouds for
materials that, when combined with certain commodities, can be used to create
pure versions of the boosters (which are not consumable). These uncut boosters
are then cut with the mineral megacyte to produce the street versions of the
drugs, the consumable combat boosters used by pod pilots.

Of
course, that doesn’t really tell you much. It’s the details that are really
important in this process so let’s get serious.

Gas Cloud
Harvesting

You
can’t just try and harvest any gas cloud which is unfortunate because there
*LOTS* of annoying gas clouds in missions. No, the gas clouds you are looking
for are hidden in Null and Low Sec constellations that you find through
exploration.

Gas
clouds are found in Ladar exploration sites in specific constellations in Eve,
for example the Pegasus constellation in the Fountain region. Note that the 0.0
gas cloud sites differed from the low sec gas cloud sites in the type of
clouds, and that the low sec clouds are the ones used in the manufacturing of the
legal Synth boosters while the illegal Standard, Improved, and Strong versions
depend on clouds found in 0.0.

Once
you have located a gas cloud exploration site, you need a ship equipped with a Gas Cloud Harvester I in order to
extract the gas and the module needs the Gas
Cloud Harvesting skill in order to operate it; in fact each level of the
skill allows for the use of one gas cloud harvester. The module and skill books
can be found in the same sites as the gas clouds themselves, although many of
both are now available on the market in decent volumes.

There
are no skills to increase yield but there are three hardwiring implants called Eifyr
and Co. ‘Alchemist’ ZA-0, ZA-1, and ZA-2 which gives a 1%,
3%, and 5% reduction in cycle time respectively.

There
are two strains of gas clouds. Mykoserocin which is found in low sec and used
in Synth booster production, and Cytoserocin which is found in null sec and
used in Standard, Improved, and Strong boosters. In addition, each strain comes
in 8 different types and each one is used in a different booster type. The next
section has Table 1 which shows the exact relationships.

Reactions

Once
you have the gas clouds harvested, you need to transform them into the Pure
boosters. To do this you need a POS with a Medium
Biochemical Reactor for Synth and Standard booster production, a Biochemical Reactor for Improved and
Strong booster production. Note that these reactors cannot be anchored in high
sec.

You
also need silos for the input materials such as the extracted gas, trade
commodities, and pure boosters (for Improved and Strong boosters, more on this later)
and silos for the outputted pure booster and any left over trade commodities,
and of course all has to be linked properly to the reactor with the Reaction inside.
Once properly setup the reaction runs every hour.

The
actual Reactions can be found in Radar sites in the gas cloud constellations
(more exploration yay!) and in contracts or on market anywhere.

Figure
1 – A Synth Blue Pill Booster Reaction

As
you can see in Figure 1, the end result of the reaction is the Pure booster
which is too strong to be ingested by pilots. You can either take this output
and dilute it to combat booster strength, or you can take Pure Standard and
Pure Improved booster materials to create Pure Improved and Pure Strong booster
materials. See Table 1 for the full details.

Table
1 – The booster reactions.

You
will notice after looking at Table 1 that the Improved and Strong boosters not
only need Pure Standard and Improved boosters as an input, but also Pure
Standard and Improved boosters of other drug types. This means that major drug
manufacturing operations need to be very large producing several types of Pure
boosters to manufacture the high end versions.

Drug Manufacturing

As
mentioned, the Pure boosters can’t be used by pod pilots. Instead they have to
be processed into a less pure combat booster.

To
do this you need Drug Lab POS
structure and a Booster BPC which can be obtained from the Loyalty Point stores
of the various pirate factions in the case of Synth boosters, or exploration
sites in the case of the Standard/Improved/Strong boosters. As well you will
need the Drug Manufacturing skill
which can be found in Radar sites much like the Gas Cloud Harvesting skillbook.

The
Drug Lab has to be anchored in 0.0 or low sec like the Biochemical Reactors and
it has one Drug Manufacturing slot in it. Like an assembly array or mobile lab,
you put the materials in the Drug Lab and start the job. See Table 2 for
details.

Table
2 – Turning Pure boosters into usable Combat Boosters

Once
the drug manufacturing process is complete, you have your combat boosters ready
to use or to smuggle to market.

Conclusion

It
is not an easy process and involves a lot of resources, specialized equipment,
and plenty of patience, but a large operation with pilots running scan probes
and bringing the found resources to the reactors and labs can be profitable.

2 comments:

Just want to toss out that there is a least a small chance of finding cytoserocin clouds in low sec. A couple weeks ago I'd found a Lime Cyto site in a 0.4 system in Derelik. Was a great day, 500 units at 250k/each at the time =D

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